Re: Python ssl handling could be better...

[bk <chort0 () gmail com>]

On Nov 14, 2010, at 8:54 AM, dave b wrote:

> Just when you thought it couldn't get worse...
>
> http://bugs.python.org/issue3596
> http://bugs.python.org/issue4870

As a follow-up to this, I recently started working with the python-twitter library 
(http://code.google.com/p/python-twitter/) that makes use of urllib2 for HTTPS requests, which in turn relies on 
httplib (that is shipped with Python).  Auditing all the way back down the stack of objects I didn't notice any 
parameters that override the defaults to require certificate verification, and in fact the ssl library for Python 2.6.5 
(which is the latest on OpenBSD at least) does no verification of the server's cert by default.  I checked the page for 
httplib (http://docs.python.org/library/httplib) to see if I could pass a parameter to override the default (insane) 
behavior and found this helpful message: Warning This does not do any verification of the server’s certificate.

So anyone using Python's built-in httplib (usually via urllib2) is screwed.

You can't say you weren't warned (even Facebook has heard of Firesheep, there's no excuse).

--
chort
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